Does online have a shorter shelf life than it's counter parts

In my view online is a bit hit and miss when it comes to shelf life, I do believe that in order for online work to have a better shelf life you need to make it work a lot harder for you.

What do I mean?

Well with and offline material you will have the users undivided attention (how ever long that may be) and it's at points where they can't really escape. With online you need to direct and entertain your user whilst not boring them, they want to see motion, they want sound and they want to be told.

Why is this the case?

This is the entertainment age we all want to see and hear something astounding, the message is clear it requires less effort for the user and to keep it fresh you need to be able the generate content.

So how does this relate back to the question. Simple. You have 20 seconds of my time, your job is to keep me interested past 20 seconds. What do you do?

So the olympics are over.

But why should the fun stop, here are a few of my favorite ads from the event.

Building wrap

Coke branding

Mini rick shaw

Samsung viewing pods (not sure I'd stick my head in it there though)

How to deal with a client - For freelancers

Well it's been a quiet month for me, summers now arrived and a lot of clients are on holiday.

So that gives me time to write a bit about dealing with clients direct if you're freelancing.

As some of you are freelancing I am guessing from time to time you'll get clients approaching you directly. Well the usual courteous mannerisms are required, try to be very formal remember you're not on ground in which you can start making jokes that's not to say you shouldn't reciprocate if he does.

Insist on meeting, it's very important to put a face to the phone call for both yourself and the client, this will give the client more confidence that he's not dealing with a cowboy and also clients like to be serviced.

You should use the meeting to ask as many questions as you can about the brief or take the brief. A lot of things aren't done very well over the phone; briefing is one of them (probably a creative thing only).

Don't act like a poor man, offer your knowledge to your client, remember you're dealing with the client direct now and as such you need to need to be on side and offer him advice even if it's a 30 minute phone call. Chances are that if he likes your advice he'll give you the job any way.

Don't be optimistic with time lines, this is a big mistake I once made with the client. Dealing with the client is very different than dealing with agencies, agencies have people that are in charge of dealing with time lines clients and budgets. If you're new to the game give yourself as much time to do the work as possible, try and factor in at least a couple of days buffer just incase the client throws a curve ball at you and if you deliver a day early then the client will love you for it.

That's it for now, your next instalment on this will be either new business or servicing the client. It really depends on how I feel unless somebody comments on how they really wants to read a particular title of course.

It's a weird ad for a weird product

Xbox have released a game called Viva Pinata, it's got some thing to do with Pinata's and I'm not 100% sure what the point is but here is the tv ad.

Not so natural history exhibition

There's a nice exhibition going on at the natural history museum in Basel, Switzerland.

It shows the skeletal features of well known cartoon characters, click here to see some examples.

what's up, Doc?

Does it offend you?

Today I want to discuss ads that have recently been banned or discussed due to how offensive it is.

First of all I want to ask a question, how many of you are guilty of laughing at something you really shouldn't have.

Second is how many of you base your conduct on societies reaction of you.

What has annoyed me is peoples reaction to these ads, all of them are supposed to be in jest. Of course it's easy to find the problems but are they really a problem?

I am going to talk about the 3 latest ads to come under fire:

Heinz Deli Ad
So this ad got pulled because of the homosexual content. Lets talk about the scene in question, a guy kisses another guy in which one guy is playing the wife. Why did this offend you?

Is it because there are 2 same sex people kissing, perhaps it's because you feel it's taking the piss or promoting gay marriages, may be it just makes you feel awkward.

But is it any of the above?

Would you be offended by the rocky horror show, may be Lily Savage or Eddie Izzard how about if you had a crossing child playing role play?

Snickers Ad
So Mr. T decides that speed walkers are a disgrace to the man race and all of a sudden we all decide that the ad is attacking gay people.

So it's not that a man mincing and swinging his hips side to side is bloody disgusting, Noooo!

We have automatically deduced that a Man > speed walking > mincing = gotta be gay.

For me; complaints on this ad has just based on a whole lot of assumption based on innuendo.

Spanish Olympic Basketball Ad
Well this one is more obviously offensive but what I don't like is the amount of fuss it's been kicking up. First of all they have almost used this ad as an excuse to bring up more of a reason to hate the Spanish.

Sure it's a misjudged ad but it's not aimed to alienate the Chinese.

I suppose what I'm getting at with all these ads is that we aren't really offended by these ads, in fact I think that we are offended because we are worried about how people see us and that society says we should but behind closed doors we are secretly having a giggle with your close mates.

Am I wrong?

Leave a comment and tell me why I am.

Spanish olympic ad

So some of you may have seen the Olympic ad from the Spanish basketball team, if you haven't its below

There's been a lot of outrage about this ad and I can understand why, although I'm sure it's been done in jest; it's evident that the rest of the world doesn't think so.

The Spanish Olympic association have obviously jump to the defense of the players but you have to think who did sign this off and who actually thought this would be a good idea.

Obviously Spanish advertising doesn't really take much notice of research but to screw up on such a big stage I'm sure some one's head is going to roll over this. Already people are comparing this to other sporting incidents i.e. Lewis Hamilton and Theirry Henry.

I'm not sure this can be classed on the same scale as those incidents are quite malicious and this is supposed to "promote" the games. I'm sure this incident will blow over in no time but keep you eyes on sponsorship deal being dropped when some of the player return to the states.

So what do you all think?

Are we being to over protected?

How many of you feel you are overly protected by your agency?

Examples are:

• No client contact without the accounts team
  
• No taking a brief without a project manager
• No conference calls with out a "suit" present

Not that I think these are bad things but it does feel like I have a baby sitter looking after me all the while.

What do you guys think about this, do you have an opinion or does your company do things differently?

Guinness ad, real or fake. Who cares!

A lot of publicity has been given to the new Guinness ad lately.

Here it is



Guinness are trying frantically to pull this ad off any where it appears and have denied making it at all.

Whether they did or not it looks very well done regardless.

Ever wondered why some watches are so expensive?

Montblanc have released an amazing website showcasing their latest collection of watches.

From showing how the watches are made to showing off the latest collection, this is a masterpiece in 3D, the animations are so detailed and so well rendered that you have to think how long it took them to render the final piece.

See it here.

Elastoplast Viral by TBWA

TBWA have released a viral campaign for Elastoplast, I'm not sure it has been done as well as it could have been.

The client asked for TBWA to create an ad which re branded the product as a badge of an exciting life, rather than a painful story. The result was a giraffe escaping from a zoo with the story produced using Elastoplast and ink pen.

After watching the video I think it takes far too long to get to the point and the content is not engaging. I honestly hope this isn't the only activity driving traffic to the site.

Moving on to the microsite it's hugely dull and uninspiring, and it doesn't really appeal to either adult or child. the following quote was taken from Jo Blundell, managing director of network business at TBWA\London

"Kids love the excitement of creating their own stories and the emotive insight behind every bump your little one gets is that there's a exciting beginning, not painful end.

It sounds very good saying it but this isn't and execution that reflects this statement and it wouldn't get my kids logging on. I'm assuming that this was a brand building exercise and in my opinion they have fallen very short of their audience, it's very corporate and just executed very badly.

So in short this is what I would address:

• Long copy - kids don't read long copy and the tone is not very friendly
• Look and feel - It has a very corporate frame work and style, it reminds me of being in school, it certainly looks as dull as school
• Competition - this feels very bolted on with not much thought, it certainly doesn't feel like it's appealing to children

I am disappointed in this piece only because I had always thought that working in a bigger agency meant you had the resource to create amazing work. This isn't to say the idea was bad it's just not followed through as well as I think it should have.

The campaign can be seen here.

Olympics video follow up

Well as a follow up to my post about the BBC identity for the Olympic games; Campaign has done a vox pops research video about what people think.

Basically alot of people agreed with my initial opinion about the video i.e. Chinese story > China > Olympics > What? Looks great though.

Have a look at the video here.

Celebrating 20 years of NIKE and W+K

This ad have been around for about a month now but I've only just got round to write about it.

It's to celebrate 20 years of "Just do it". It's a great piece of work that goes down memory lane as much as it's celebrating the campaign I love the celebration of sport and acheivements in general.

The sound track goes so well with the video too.



If any of you want a more info on the sports celebrities in the ad then click here. Nike have done a nice little widget to go with the video.

Orangina, you're wrong and brilliant at the same time

So I've just been flicking around channels when I saw this add on Paramount.




This is the French version but the line used in the UK version is "shake it to wake it", I actually saw this ad at the start of the year in archive but I always assumed it would never run over her due to the content but I'm glad it did.

It's both the best animated sequence I have seen in a TV ad in a while and is hilarious.

Simply brilliant but so very very wrong. Humor makes up for it though, well unless you are in to that type of thing, if that's the case then........... well good for you :S

Love the ad though.

Pastures new - part 2

This is a follow up post to why people up root an move else where for their profession in advertising, today it's Simon Gut he's at HMX media in Soho.

A bit of background, Simon moved over from South Africa with his wife where he previously ran a successful online creative boutique called Mojo, he then decided to sell up and come over to the UK with his wife Simone.

Now that's out of the way, let's begin

Why did you move to London
After selling our boutique agency and looking for a new adventure I decided to move to London.

It was a tossup with Dubai (which seemed like better money at the time), however I expected to gain better experience in London, since most of the UAE agencies are run by ex pats from around the globe anyway.

So what were your expectations at the time?
Cutting edge advertising – its part of the BIG3: London / New York / Paris - guess I was mistaken. Don’t get me wrong - the quality of work being produced in London is good - but only if a ton of money is spent. Exorbitant sums of advertising fees are accrued before the concepts are even briefed. Processes seem to dominate the creative industries and I’m yet to see great creative work that is produced on low budgets. They seem to be far and few between, but when they do appear they shine.

Were the realities drastically different?
O’h yes. Peoples roles and responsibilities seemed to be quite pigeon holed. But not to say it’s all bad… I guess it allows me to do what I do best.

What's your view on the local market as it stands?
I think the quality of online material from the smaller digital agencies seems to be much better than that of the larger marketing giants. Far too many of the larger agencies sell themselves as media neutral and integrated specialists. It seems to be cheap talk, which many clients/brands are catching onto. What the hell is media neutral? What were they before they were media neutral. And just because you have a web-designer – it doesn’t make you a digital specialist. I guess it’s bound to happen the more ad spend shifts to online.

Any regrets on moving over?
Not really – it’s been an interesting experience. I would like to attempt the same move to New York at least once in my career to compare notes.

Did you come over here to cause a change or to learn?
Not really, the decision was based on an adventure – and it’s been one. Learning comes naturally when you’re having fun – and yes I’m having fun.

Top tips to survive?

· As a foreigner, make sure you acquire many recognisable British brands in your portfolio as soon as possible. Many agencies seem to require this regardless of the fact that you have international brands. How is Microsoft not a recognisable brand – go figure. I guess the requirement should definitely apply if you are applying to agencies working with FMCG brands.

· Make sure you find a decent agent to represent you. They seem to be far and few between.

· Never stop updating your portfolio – what’s great today seems crap tomorrow.

· Don’t be afraid to network. Keep yourself informed of all industry events, whether showcases, speaker events or just general get-togethers. I meet up with a group of folks from different agencies every Thursday evening for drinks. It’s a great way to meet other creative’s and learn about their latest achievements and their companies.

Top places that you have found whilst out there?
This is advertising – I don’t believe that there is such a thing as a good or bad company. There is however good and bad creative.

Some great creative to surface out of London in the last while seems to be from the folks at Glue London, Goodtechnology, Lowe London. There’s plenty more but we all know who they are.

Predictions for the market.
If you are working within an online environment - good for you. Ad spend is definitely heading your way. Especially with the gloom on an English recession, marketers will gain greater reach online at lower costs, with the reassurance of measurable ROI. Consideration for the future of digital is film experience as the IPTV arena is growing rapidly, an area many above the line agencies will try and cash in on if not already.

Well thats the end, I'd like to tank Simon and I hope you've enjoyed this post, you can see Simons wares at www.bootleg.co.za

It's time for an edition or good idea, bought idea

As you've all gathered this post is about ideas, who does what, who says what and who sells what

So what are good ideas?

Are good ideas the ones the creative thinks best serve the purpose or is it the accounts team.

Then after this argument who's in the right? The agency, the client? We all know he saying the customer is always right but how true is that. Is it the agencies job to lead the way on ideas or the clients seeing as he's paying?

People in the industry will have witnessed some howlers of advertising suicide with shoddy campaigns etc. and I'm sure in the process heads have rolled in the passed but who is essentially responsible? You? Me? The client?

And how do we make sure that the good ideas run. I suppose what it boils down to is; are we working for good ideas, or ideas that can be bought.

We also need to bear in mind that we can be too precious about work, David Ogilvy said "You can't critique your own work" this isn't to say what we come up with will be wrong but just be prepared to face tough criticism to meet a greater good.

So have a think about it next time you are cursing the client, account team, creative and let know what you come up with.

How to not conduct yourself in the work place

He's is a list of things that you should NOT do when you come into work as a freelancer.

DON'T

• come in late (over 1 hour)
• come in high
• stare at a blank screen and tell me you don't understand what needs to be done (turn on the damn computer!)
• tell me how your wife hates Chinese people (I'm Chinese)
• tell me how much you think I'm a nice guy, I don't care bout how you think your a great judge of character
• Don't show up the following day after being told not to come back
  

As you can tell I've had some what of a bad day.

Client, friend or foe?

Clients, we either love them or hate them but why?

As creatives we may get frustrated that they don't pick the idea that we feel works the best for the parameters that have set, it could be they want to shoe horn two very different ideas into one or perhaps half way through they completely change their mind and re-write the brief or worse still can the project.

From a universal stand point it could be the strangle hold on the budget, we all know that clients always like something for nothing these days but it's getting more and more common to get good work for the budgets that's available.

Like it or hate it this is the most common struggle that happens in agencies these days.

But should this be the way?

Why do we hate clients, is it because we're now an industry of 9-5 people so we are not putting in the effort with clients or is it because we coming against a new style of client. Without being in account management I don't know but it's hard to fathom that clients have changed a great deal may be some of you can tell me something different.

The other question is should creatives fraternize with clients. I'm not sure if this is a good use of this term but "it's always good to know your enemy" but does that in turn mean your creating your ideas for the individual or does it just help you get a better understanding for the project?

I've been in my fair share of client meetings and selling in the creative has never really been that hard. Striking up a relationship with the client always helps, socialising and adding the personal touch has never gone down badly in my experience it also helps that the client feels like he's putting his two pence worth of course sometimes it's never used but at least there is more of an understanding between the client and the creative.

So basically nearing the end of this post I have mostly posted problems to do with clients but to be truthful I have been lucky in the sense that communication between myself and the client are good enough for me not to have the problems above.

Let me know if you have some good client stories or nightmares.

The olympics are less than a week away.

And the BBC Olympic identity was launched last week. I have mixed feelings about this.

On one hand it's very well done and I have always liked the gorillaz style of illustration.

On the other hand I find that it stereotypes the Chinese in the sense it's a Chinese story. Actually come to think about it what does it have to do with the Olympics? It's not like the Olympics are coming to the west, it's going to the east!

Anyone that knows me know I am not so offended by these types of stereotypes but I can understand how some Chinese people can be slight iffy with this route because of the link. Hey I know what will be a good idea let's use Jackie Chan to commentate it whilst were on the subject of weak links.

Ahh well, here it is. Let me know if I'm being overly critical about this.

Presenting, who should do it?

The question is presenting, who should present creative work?

There are plenty of mixed views about this scamp believes that no creative should present. Where as Yutaro (DYR) and Ivy (Dentsu) both believe that creatives should present the work.

Here's argument for presenting to the client. As a creative you are pretty much resigned to the fact the client always has to add his 2 pence worth to your creative no matter how solid you may feel it is. Presenting to the client is my way to get first hand what the client wants.

I think the reason creatives aren't allowed to present is the fear that account handlers have of us questioning or trying to get reasons for amends from the client. Perhaps it's more of a trust thing (I suppose acting like creative never wins you any points on the mature meter), but regardless of this the questions that need to be asked are still valid as it may effect the integrity of the overall creative.

There is also the arguement a client will find it hard to feed back on creative he/she doesn't like as the creative is the one presenting it. In my opinion that's bollocks, this is a business; if your client doesn't have the balls to communicate feedback properly then it would be a surprise you could get anywork done on time with all the work that get un-signed.

The polar opposite of this is that worry that the creative will not take rejection very well. This could be true in the case of juniors or graduates but lets be honest people that have been in the game for 5+ years would've been shot down by account guys, creative directers etc. If you're a sensitive creative then I would simply tell you to grow some balls and deal with it.

Simply for me I prefer to present my own work, it's more of a trust issue for me. I don't trust account handlers to present my work as they may not understand the thinking behind it, I also don't belive they will answer the correct questions to get the feedback I require.

This is not true of all account handlers but we can't all work in a business where you have a team that is 100% top grade account men in the agency (or can we?).

The final thing I would say on this matter is also 'confidence' , if you're not confident at presenting then don't, you'll only make it worse for yourself and the agency.

The client wants it red

How online advertising should be done - part 5

Part 5 - The follow through

So you've sold in your idea and now it's time to farm it out to designers and developers, so what do you do?

Be part of the process, it's more hard work I'm sure and yes I'm sure you're busy like the rest of us but lets take the point of view of the people that work around you. For everyone else it's just taking something and making it pretty.

I've been a designer and developer and it's frustrating, when all is said and done they are working to make you or the company look good so involve them, get people as excited as you are and make them work for you.

This seems like a very patronising statement but it does depend on how you look at it. You want the designers and developers to understand your idea and like how you would direct a TV ad or an animation you would work with the director and show them how you want the end user to react to your 'master piece'.

Let's be honest here a good designer will be able to make a master piece out of anything but I suppose what I am getting at is transferring the passion you have to the designer so that he/she knows what to do.

The same goes for developers, whether it is lines of code or user experience. I didn’t want to use this term but ‘any one can build a website’ but not everyone can build a website to engage a user. Developers know the latest and greatest in accessibility and user involvement on a site, describe the journey and direct them.

Well not sure what the next"How online advertising should be done" post will be. If any one would like any insight into the world of interactive leave me a comment.

The fine line between jobs

Today we'll discuss what you think your job is. It's not just about your duties it's about more than that, I suppose what I am getting at is 'do you see yourself doing more than what you currently do'.

I ask this question to see if you as either a creative, planner, programmer, art worker etc. see yourself doing anybody else's job. I bring this up because I previously always admired the fact the agencies were would take initiative in learning other departments traits and using them to their advantage.

What saddens me now though is that agencies don't really do that anymore, company structures are alot more modular and it's based on more of a production line. It's not like I am asking creatives to start programming and planner to art work as that would purely be impractical (obvious point) but the point I am trying to get is why don't we take time to do a bit of understanding.

What is there to understand?

Here's a good example for you, as a creative I'm not particularly technical by any means but I recieve a brief for adpating a print ad into a microsite, now we all know what a microsite looks like, so I decide I will build a microsite that's copy heavy that will communicate everything that the original print campaign didn't contain. Then present to client and slip it off to production and Bang! Presto!

ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FREAKIN MIND!?!?

What's wrong with all of you! These people that all work in the company have their own expertise in their field, they know what's hot and what's not, they know the technology, strategy, stunt, media placements etc. and how it can help you for the greater good of your campaign.

Now I'm not sure when we became:

1. arrogant enough to ignore talent and expertise
2. so reliant on process and standing in a straight line that the final product didn't really matter

But I'm pretty sure we should all be ashamed of ourselves if we are or trying to fall into what I can only describe as a dark place for creativity.

Look around your agency, see the people around you. Ask peoples opinions, push your project that little bit further with the talent that's around you and be resourceful and most importantly don't be afraid to ask. Ask questions, for opinions, for direction.